“Evil Dead Burn” eyes a $15 million opening for director Sébastien Vaniček. The latest film in the growing “The Evil Dead” universe follows Lee Cronin’s 2023 take, “Evil Dead Rise,” and has critics and moviegoers split down the middle due to its extreme horror approach to the classic material. Vaniček co-wrote the script with Florent Bernard and franchise creator Sam Raimi, bringing a sense of reverence for the 1981 original film.
Previously, Vaniček made a splash with his 2023 feature film debut, “Infested,” a creature feature about a spider outbreak in an apartment high-rise. Following a successful theatrical run in France, popular streaming service Shudder acquired the rights for a release in the U.S., as well as the U.K., Australia, New Zealand and Ireland on its platform. The Rotten Tomatoes critic consensus describes the film as “chillingly effective” with “stylish efficiency.”
If filmmaker Sébastien Vaniček had his way, there’s another well-known IP that he’d love to reinvent.
‘The Mask’ Could See a Much Darker Adaptation
“I think I would dig into THE MASK, but make it closer to the comic books,” Vaniček revealed in a recent Reddit AMA. “The comic books are actually very, very violent and dark.”
Chuck Russell’s 1994 film, “The Mask,” leaned fully into slapstick comedy, shedding any notion of dark and macabre from the story. Jim Carrey played the lead character who finds the mask of Loki and transforms into a bedeviling green-faced trickster when wearing it.
“The Mask” is an adaptation of the comic book series created by Mike Richardson and published by Dark Horse Comics. The first limited series was released from July to December 1991, with the follow-up limited series, “The Mask Returns,” arriving from October 1992 to March 1993. Five more limited series have been released, and the most recent, “The Mask: I Pledge Allegiance to the Mask!,” dropped from October 2019 to January 2020.
The original story follows Stanley Ipkiss when he buys a green mask for his girlfriend. Once he tries it on, “mayhem really hits the fan, because it brings out the worst in anyone who wears it, and we mean the worst,” reads the official landing page on Dark Horse Comics. “The Mask carves his way through walls of cops and assorted creeps using weapons that range from pies to double-headed battle axes.”
That’s certainly a far cry from the 1994 film that took a more light-hearted approach, akin to “The Three Stooges.”
Will There Be an ‘Evil Dead’ Bible?
During his Reddit AMA, a user also asked Sébastien Vaniček about the potential of an “Evil Dead” Bible, laying out the mythology and lore of the series. “I heard a rumor that I can share that Sam Raimi’s brother is writing an ‘Evil Dead’ Bible, but that’s only a rumor,” he replied. “I don’t know if that’s true, but I heard it.”
As far as where “Evil Dead Burn” fits into “The Evil Dead” franchise, he didn’t have a playbook to follow or a preconceived set of rules. What he did, however, was honor the roots of the franchise and “acknowledge all the movies that were done before, so that’s why there are connections to the other movies,” such as “The Book of the Dead” and so on.
He added, “I can say that things might be a kind of a mess regarding the whole universe, but I think fans will find a lot of easter eggs and a lot of connections.”
